Hold Congress Accountable

About FreedomConnector

Find activists, groups, and events right in your own neighborhood. Join FreedomConnector to get involved and learn more about key issues threatening our economic freedom. Whether you’re looking for like-minded people, trying to boost your existing group’s impact, or simply trying to stay up on current events, FreedomConnector is the place to start. See what’s happening in your state today!

Search FreedomWorks

Resources

Blog

Democrat Joe Manchin Backs Delay of Obamacare Mandate

The cracks are beginning to show in the Democratic Party over one of the most unpopular provisions of Obamacare. Today Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia said he would support a delay of the individual mandate if it was part of a spending deal.

“There’s no way I could not vote for it,” Manchin said at a Bloomberg Government breakfast today. “It’s very reasonable and sensible.”

The House and Senate are in the midst of trying to negotiate a deal to keep the government operating with the passage of a continuing resolution. The House passed CR contained defunding for Obamacare, something that Ted Cruz argued for during his 21-plus hour speech this week on the Senate floor. A group of conservative senators led by Cruz, Mike Lee and Rand Paul are pushing to find a way to chip away at Obamacare by attaching provisions to the must pass CR and likely the upcoming deal on extending the debt-ceiling next month.

After Cruz's marathon Obamacare slugfest, pressure has been ratcheted up on his Senate colleagues. Numerous accounts have been listed of their offices being flooded with phone calls urging wider support for Obamacare delay in the Senate. The next target for anti-Obamacare activists is the swath of red state Democrats, some of whom must face their voters next year. With the unpopularity of the law building, these Democrats could face an increasingly hostile electorate back home urging them to change their stance of support for the President's signature legislative achievement.

Manchin, 66, said he’d be willing to delay the individual mandate as part of the budget negotiations because the Obama administration in July gave businesses an extra year to provide their workers with health insurance.

“Don’t put the mandate on the American public right now,” Manchin said. “Give them at least a year. If you know you couldn’t bring the corporate sector, you gave them a year, don’t you think it’d be fair?”

Bloomberg News cited FreedomWorks' "Burn Your Obamacare Card" efforts when discussing the movement pressuring Members of Congress to support significant changes to the law.

Many of the House Republicans are backed by the limited-government Tea Party movement, which is trying to cripple the law. FreedomWorks, an organization tied to the Tea Party, is targeting college campuses, telling young adults to not sign up for the government-run insurance exchanges scheduled to roll out on Oct. 1.

Senator Manchin may be the first of the red state Democrats to buckle, but Mark Pryor, Bill Nelson and Mark Begich could follow.

People do not want to have to pay for insurance. President Bush was 100 percent correct when he said everyone in the US already has healthcare, just use the emergency room. We must defeat obummercare. No matter what, I will refuse to buy insurance. Defeat, then replace with this proposal, the most logical and fair I have seen.----"But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.
"So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."

Where is the equality in Obamacare?
It is your responsibility as a law making official to honor your oath of office in respresenting ALL of the people of the United States of America. Do you really believe that leaving Corporations and Congressional members OUT of the law is equal treatment for all of the people that you represent? Where is is logic in that? Laws are to be made for all of us in this country. This law is not in the best interest of all of us so, I respectfully ask that this law NOT be passed. Remember, what you do to the least of your brothers...you should know the rest.

The premiums for lowest cost silver plans available on the federal ObamaCare exchange have jumped by 10 percent, according to an analysis conducted by Avalere Health, a consulting firm that generally advocates for the law.

The least popular feature of ObamaCare is about to become a whole lot less fun. As we head into 2015, the individual mandate dictating that all individuals purchase health insurance or else is ramping up with increased penalties.

In September, the Obama administration boasted that some 7.3 million Americans had enrolled in ObamaCare health plans. Though down from the initial 8.1 million reported in May, due to attrition by consumers not making premium pay or data inconsistencies, the number still exceeded the Congressional Budget Office's 7 million estimate for the first open enrollment period for plans taking effect in 2014.

The spin from President Barack Obama and his endless army of apologetic sycophants is that Jonathan Gruber never worked in the White House or the administration. He was, as the president and a White House spokesperson claimed, merely "some adviser" who didn't "play the same role in developing the Affordable Care Act" as staffer.

You know what they say you should do when you’re stuck in a hole: stop digging. This is advice that could well have been heeded by ObamaCare Architect Jonathan Gruber, whose repeated comments about the stupidity of the American public and the need to deceive them in order to pass ObamaCare continue to make headlines, though not the good kind like you want.

President Barack Obama sought to further distance the White House from Jonathan Gruber, the MIT professor who helped craft ObamaCare. Current and former White House and administration officials as well as Democratic leaders in Congress have tried downplay Gruber's role in light of at least six videos that have surfaced in the last several days.

The White House is trying to downplay yet another ObamaCare scandal by calling Jonathan Gruber, the architect of the law, a liar. In a statement provided to a leftist blog, a White House spokesperson disputed the MIT economist's October 2013 comment that the designed lack of transparency in ObamaCare was "a huge political advantage" to ram it through Congress.

Another video has surfaced in which Jonathan Gruber insults voters. This time, however, the MIT economist and ObamaCare architect refrained from calling Americans "stupid," though there isn't much of a difference from what he said in previous comments (covered here and here).

Jonathan Gruber, the MIT economist who helped the Obama administration craft ObamaCare, is trying to downplay his comments at a October 2013 panel discussion, during which he bragged about the designed "lack of transparency" in the Affordable Care Act and the "stupidity of the American voter."

The Department of Health and Human Services expects ObamaCare enrollments through the federal and state exchanges to come in between 9 million and 9.9 million by the end of 2015, according to CNBC, far lower than the most recent estimate released by the Congressional Budget Office in April of this year: